Turf wars

Here it is “No Mow May” and I’m trying to grow grass…and not the fun kind.

Here it is “No Mow May” and I’m trying to grow grass.

…And not the fun kind.

Yeah, an ecologically useless mix of fescue, ryegrass and Kentucky Blue. Expressely designed to do nothing but get mowed and suck water out of the soil. Purposeless, save to bounce a golf ball across – in itself among the most purposeless of human activities.

That’s what I’m investing time, money, and significant physical effort to spend the remainder of the season, perhaps the remainder of my life, tending and fussing over to one degree or another.

The alternative, unfortunately, was having the dirt from the boulevard wash into the street with every significant rain.

The backstory is that we got a new sewer line last fall – a very good thing and much appreciated multiple times each and every day. However, to get the new pipes under the ground it was necessary to overturn that which was on top of the ground, and it was too far into the growing season for new greenery to take root, leaving the front of the house barren and erosive, the sort of proto-project that ges rocketed to the apex of the ongoing “Honey-do” list.

So do it I did.

Truth be told, it was probably the easy way out. The only thing “top” about the soil the sewer installers left us was that it was on top of the ground. The rude mix of clay, sand, and small stones would provide a fine, firm, stable foundation for a sidewalk or paved street, but for any green, growing thing not native to the Sonora or Dakota Badlands, it was a truly hostile works environment. I could have hauled in loads of compost, organic matter, lime and essential trace minerals to create a rich loamy seedbed for a gloriously variegated street front ecosystem.

But I didn’t.

I dug it up, added some bagged black stuff, raked it reasonably smooth, and tossed on the grass seed. Added water and now I wait.

With luck, in a few days I’ll see some dandelions growing…and some other botanically questionable photosynthesizing life forms.

Maybe even a few tentative blades of lawn grass.

But I’m really rooting for the dandelions…and the clover and lawn violets.

It’s spring. The bees are hungry. That grass I planted will do them no good at all.

For all those frigid, slush-soaked months we've been longing for the fresh, bright blossoms of May and now that they're here, all across the city folks are firing up their Toros and Lawn Boys to behead the bright, yellow harbingers of the season. ... lawn by lawn the first crop of dandelion is falling to the mower, deflowering the landscape and leaving hives of hungry bees in their wake.

Too bad for us.

Our world is less colorful without the dandelions, less tasty without the bees.

Honey, really, is the least of it - though I'd sorely miss it drizzled thick on my morning toast. Let too many bees go hungry and we lose not just honey, but Honeycrisp apples - and plums and pears and peas and string beans. All those sting-y things that buzz may put a flinch and a swat into a cookout and picnic lunch, but without their sticking their noses into every flower and blossom, that lunch would be a lot less interesting

.

That shouldn't be news to anybody who's made it through elementary school science - but what we know and what we do don't always play well together.

As advertised, Black Flag "kills bugs dead" and, quite frankly, most of us really don't give much thought, much less two hoots, about just which bugs bite the dust after they've bitten the Pyrethrin dust. The only good bug is a dead bug. Well, maybe.

Trouble is that the world, by its very nature, is an inconvenient place. It wasn't constructed with a programmable thermostat, HEPA filters or window screens. It's home to a host of critters that lurk in the shadows and corners that sneak out to nip, snitch and poop at times and places of their own choosing. A place where things smell good and bad - depending on whether the nose belongs to a debutante or a buzzard - and we have little choice but to put up with things or go to the mall.

But we'd do well to remember that we're a species that evolved surrounded by mammoth fleas and cave bear poop. We're born well-equipped to fight off a host of nasties - and really have little cause to worry if an ant leaves itty-bitty ant tracks on the kitchen counter. We've waited a whole winter for the bugs and weeds of springtime.

And if the grass don’t grow…I can live with that.